ganymede rising
by Jonathan Shepherd
EPISODE 14
Dyrrik James eased himself deeper in his comfortable leather
chair and took another drink of his scotch. Straight and neat, just the
way he liked it, and it burned all the way down. He knew the coming of
the Dark was at hand; that slug, Brandt had told him. He couldn’t
understand why the masters wanted him alive, but one must not question.
James’ part in all of this had been simple. Keep those who would stop
the coming at bay long enough for it to take place, and his role would
be guaranteed. He had done his best, and with the sensitive out of the
way they were unlikely to discover the weight of the plan. It was
unfortunate that Chaplain had slipped away.
He took another sip of his drink and closed his eyes, knowing that
he might very well pay dearly for that slipup. Still, fear was something
the masters appreciated. As long as he was scared they might keep him
around.
He looked down to the arm of the chair where his palm computer was
resting. The screen showed the security grid for all three jump gates in
the solar system. One more security clearance and the activation codes
would be rerouted to a secret network on Ganymede. There the power
converters that had been secured from the freighter “accident” they had
arranged would be put to work. All of the collection silos were up and
running on Earth, and the gates would triangulate in exactly three hours
and twenty-seven minutes. He would relinquish security in three hours
and twenty-two minutes. All of this meticulous work was finally going to
pay off. His election to the senate, the work on the environmental
systems, the cover-ups; soon none of that would matter any longer. He
would walk with the only true gods among the slave race of man.
He felt that triggering the gates was important, and if it meant
they would keep him in their fold then he would face his future and
dream of the power they would bestow upon him. As long as the corrupters
would stay away.
***
She stood atop a great round steel platform in a frozen cavern deep
beneath the surface of Ganymede. The mistress was pleased. Her tiny red
mouth curved into a scythe-like smile as she gazed around her at the
crowd of red-cloaked figures who bowed in supplication. Though lithe,
her body exuded a presence that filled the cavern.
“Children of the Dark, the hour is upon us.” She paced back and
forth like a lion in a cage, gazing out at her followers. “What you give
here today in service to our power will guarantee your place at our
side, while the rest of your feeble race will serve us…” she paused for
a moment and breathed deeply of the chill, “and suffer beneath our
feet!”
“Praise to the Dark Gods! May the elders find us worthy!” The crowd
chanted together and swayed back and forth, drugged by the anticipation
of unlimited power.
“In moments, I will give the command. The gates that will open the
veil are nearly in line, and all the suffering of humanity will be a
beacon for the higher race. We will swarm to your world and shape it in
our image. Your purpose will unfold before you, and the daily torture
your kind thrives upon will finally have cause.”
“Praise to the Dark Gods! May the elders find us worthy!” Their
faces were upturned toward the mistress, bald and glowing in the
brightness that reflected from the frozen walls around them.
There was a quaking deep within the ice-moon, and the mistress bowed her
head.
“Prepare yourselves, my children, the time is come.”
With that, the mistress pressed a button at her wrist and closed
her eyes. A sound came from her mouth like the buzzing of a million
insects. And then she paused, confused.
She pressed the button again, and again there was silence.
From next to her platform one of the robed figures pulled back his
hood and said, “Maybe it would work better with this.”
Chaplain held up a tiny silver cylinder with crystal wire spiraling
around it.
“Did you really think we’d let this happen?” He smiled at her, and then
leapt to the platform next to her.
The room erupted in screams and violence. Near the back of the
crowd, Jenna and Jonas lifted their hoods and began fighting.
“You fools! The gates have opened! What more do you think we need?
The beacon may not call them, but we are here! There is nothing you can
do!”
“We can keep you off our world, bitch! And we will!” Chaplain
lunged at her with his razor-knives and she stepped aside effortlessly.
She swatted him away like an insect and he went sailing twenty feet
backward, landing with a metal clang.
“Chaplain!” Jenna screamed.
Jonas shot a glance their way and yelled, “He’ll be okay Jenna!
Watch your own back- we have to hold them off!”
With the handle of one of his knives, Chaplain crushed the cylinder
on the platform, and looked up at the mistress with fire in his eyes.
“We wanted you to see your plans crumble before you! You like suffering
so much, have some on me!” He swung his legs around under him and leapt
up to face her again.
“You would have been a strong slave, human, but now you will only
die beneath my boot!” She crouched and sprung at him like a cat and they
were a tangle of black vinyl and scarlet fabric.
Jenna managed to back away from the fight and checked her
communicator. “Edward, did you get the gates closed?” She yelled into
her wrist.
“Almost! I don’t think the silos activated, but all three gates are
wide-open. I’m trying!” Edward’s voice came through static.
Jonas fought his way through the crowd, trying to get to the
platform. “Chaplain! She’s too strong! We have to get out of here before
it blows!”
When he got closer he saw Chaplain on his knees. The mistress
delivered an uppercut and a spray of blood showered the platform, his
body falling backward.
Jenna pressed another button on her communicator and shouted,
“Now!”
From beneath the crowd chunks of ice came flying upward as great
metallic spiders climbed out of their hiding places, laser welders and
pincers sparking to life.
The crowd continued to panic and several of the cultists were
crushed easily beneath the worker-drones. Meanwhile, on the platform the
mistress looked worried. The ground shook harder.
Into her communicator Jenna shouted, “Edward! Hurry the fuck up!
Chaplain is going to die!”
“…Got it! Now get out of there!” His voice came through the static
and Jenna didn’t waste any time. She ran toward the platform, crushing
the larynx of a cultist along the way.
Knowing her time was up, the mistress leapt off the platform, her
sharp heel piercing the stomach of one of her followers. She ran out of
the chamber with preternatural speed, the way behind her sealing with
the hiss of a steel air lock.
“Damn it!” Jonas watched her flee and ran to Chaplain’s side. He
looked up at Jenna as she joined them. “He’s breathing, but he won’t be
able to make it on his own. Can you carry him?”
“No. But he can.” Jenna spoke a few commands in the direction of a
mining drone, and it crawled over to the platform. “There’s room enough
for all of us, he can get us to the tunnel and we’ll slide the rest of
the way!”
Few of the cultists remained standing, either crushed or having run
away, and the spider-like drone carried the three of them toward one of
the holes that had been burrowed through the floor. They jumped in, and
the room continued to quake. Before long great pieces of ice from the
walls and ceiling began to fall inward. The whole place was buckling in
on itself.
***
“From here it still looks so peaceful.” Jenna looked out of the
view port of their spacecraft at the dark rocky looking surface of
Ganymede, a cloud of ice hanging in the space above where the
underground complex used to be. Then she started to weep.
“Jenna. It’s okay. She knew what it meant to be with us. Her life
wasn’t spent in vain.” Edward held his arm around her and guided her
head to his shoulder.
“B-but we didn’t even find her… what they could have done to her…”
“If we hadn’t stopped this whole thing, things would have been
worse for everyone.” Alex stepped up to their side and stared out,
blank-faced. “We all lost people we loved. We have to move on.”
“Yes,” said Edward, “because it isn’t over. The gates opened. We
just kept them from our world. Who knows if any of them found their way
in without the beacon?”
“I know,” said Jenna, “and there could be others who were already
here; the mistress couldn’t have been the only ETH.” She turned to
Jonas, “How is he?”
“He’s going to be all right. He lost some blood, but I know he’ll
recover.” He looked back down at Chaplain’s unconscious body and dabbed
his head with a moist cloth. “We’ve been through worse in the past, but
I’m not sure we’ve ever fought a battle with so high a price-tag.”
“I just hope she’s gone.” Jenna whispered. “Do you think the blast
took her out?”
“We used enough explosives to make a crater in the ice.” Said
Jonas, “If anybody survived that, I’ll be surprised.”
Alex looked at them and then back out the view port. “I hope you’re
right…”
***
In the wreckage beneath the ice, the mistress pushed a metal beam
off of herself. She was shaken, and knew that in this human body she
would run out of oxygen soon. She clawed her way to her feet and
stumbled through her chambers. It was unfortunate that things didn’t
work out the way they planned, but she would salvage herself and open
the gates again. She had nothing but time.
She limped through the broken halls of her underground fortress and
tried to make it to the shuttle bay, and was startled to see another
figure emerging from the wreckage.
A naked woman, unscathed by the blast and crowned in a mane of red
hair walked slowly from the shadows and tilted her head to one side in a
gesture not unlike curiosity.
“You survived?” The mistress called out to her. “How?”
She limped across the rubble to her prior captive and stared her in
the eyes.
“Never mind,” the mistress said, “you obviously have no mind left.
You will serve me as I reestablish our power. I knew eventually you’d
break. They always do.” She reached her hand out toward Tanya’s hair and
smiled, but stopped short as the other woman grabbed her wrist.
There was a crack like a gunshot as the mistress’ arm broke, and
Tanya smiled. The mistress’ expression changed to one of pain, then
fear. “Wha…”
In a flash, Tanya struck out with her other hand and broke the
woman’s neck, her limp body falling to the floor in a heap of vinyl and
blood.
“Serve you?” She said, her voice chiming like church bells in the
distance, “I think not. You failed us… but we have found another way.
They will think this a victory, but the battle has just begun.”
